Resource Center

As the Navy develops and fields medium and large unmanned surface vessels and unmanned surface and airborne ISR platforms, SouthCom is a logical and advantageous theater in which to operate them as soon as they are ready.

At the forefront of USV innovation is Saildrone, a company that began with a vision of sustainable maritime data collection and has since become one of the world’s premier providers of autonomous ocean mapping vehicles.

The blanket purchase agreement, signed by the Department of Homeland Security, is aimed at providing maritime domain awareness for safety of life at sea in international and U.S. coastal waters.

Brian Connon, VP Ocean Mapping at Saildrone shares insights into the three classes of USV. Challenging maritime security needs and the race to map the seabed stand out as key market drivers. Connon also sheds light on recent projects and the future of the company and its tech.

With its fleet of autonomous USVs, Saildrone is tackling a range of maritime missions that are less costly, carbon-intensive, or dangerous than those using crewed ships—from mapping Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) to detecting illegal fishing and monitoring subsea cables for tampering.

US-based Saildrone deployed a handful of unmanned surface vessels as part of NATO’s Task Force X demonstration in the Baltic Sea, which helped detect and track Russian shadow-fleet vessels operating in the area.